Getting the Most from Your Bench Press

All you guys that want a better bench press listen up. These are tips that I used to get my bench press up to 385lbs in just over a couple of months. First of all a heavy bench press isn't for everyone, if you have very long arms then bench press is most likely not going to be your strong suit. My arms are fairly short in proportion to some other peoples and I'm a little barrel chested so this may have made it a little easier, but I still had to work really hard at it. Before you go out and tear a pec muscle make sure that you've already been working on your bench press a little bit so that your bones, ligaments, and tendons are acquainted with some kind of heavy weight. If your trying to lose weight at the same time you're trying to increase your bench press then you should throw in the towel on the bench press project. In order to get maximum results out of your bench press you need to eat a lot of protein. Raw egg whites, whey protein, and peanut butter sandwiches are your friends.

Nutrition and healing are the major foundations of pushing heavy weight. You want to make as many microscopic tears that you can in your arms and pec muscles and give them ample time to heal. You should only work on maxing out your bench press about once a week and should not work on bench press more than twice a week. What I would do is work out as hard as I possibly could on bench press and only return to it later that week or the beginning of the next week when I could no longer feel any pain or soreness from lactic acid build up. So, you don't have to stick to a set schedule, you may heal slower or faster than I did it just depends on your own body's muscle synthesis.

You want to take some kind of an energy booster before your intended bench press workout, something like creatine or some other kind of energy booster. Start off your work out by getting the blood flowing on an elliptical where you use your arms, maybe 5-10 minutes at most then it's time to hit the bench. Start off with a moderate amount of weight on the bench press. I started off with 135lbs for my warm up and did about half of the reps that I could have done. You just want to get into the motion of what your doing and have a good strategy on the motion your going to use to bench press that weight. Some people grip their thumbs around the bar some leave their thumbs to the back of the bar, do whatever you feel most comfortable with. Now, hopefully you have a good idea of how much weight you can push. So put that on the rack and maybe add about an extra 10-20lbs. Now to do this you're going to have a spot on the bench press. You need someone that is very strong and has spotted for bench press before. Now make sure you've got some chalk on your hands and they're dry, psych your self up and take in some heavy breaths trying to get as much oxygen into your blood as you can. Grab that bar off the bench press like you have a personal problem with it drop it down and push it up as fast as you can, if you were successful on the first rep then go for another. Do as many as you can, now this is where it gets important. You need to make sure before you go to do the bench press that your spotter knows you want to force rep as many times as possible ( a force rep is where the spotter assists in the lift going up and down with the guy that's doing the bench press and when he can't push the weight off of his chest the spotter pulls up on the bar just enough to allow the person underneath to push the weight back up slowly. You normally only get in one or two force reps.

Now that you have maxed out it's time for the real work out to begin. Drop about 20lbs off of what you were previously doing on the bench press and go through the whole process of repping the weight again, as many as you can and as many force reps, drop the weight another twenty pounds and do it again. Take decent breaks in between to make sure you're not to winded, you need all the strength you can get. After you do this process all the way back down to the initial weight you began with then you need to do some pushups, most likely if you did everything right you won't be able to do a push up, if you can't then do some girl pushups. Now it's time to heal, do not work out any other muscle groups after this workout that have anything to do with bench press, I personally was done with my workout for the day at this point and if you're going to workout the next day do legs, calves, or abs. Make sure you do everything you can to allow yourself to heal properly, healing is fundamental for heavy bench press. Eat your protein about an hour before you work out and immediately following the bench press and drink plenty of water to hydrate those muscles even after you've worked out. The next time you go to do bench press throw another 10-20lbs on there and force rep like hell is coming down on you and you'll see that your bench press goes up weekly.